Need a little insight on moving to Maine pleasse??

[RANGER.101ST]

Originally Posted by Acadianlion

LOL! I love your style, and remind me never to get into your car. NYC is six hours (330 miles) from Portland, Maine. There is NO way that you can get to NYC in 55 minutes by aircraft unless you are in a Lear jet and breaking every flight rule in the FAA operating manual. It is almost one hour from Portland to Logan Airport by Cessna 172 (I have done that and landed at Logan several times), and it is much longer than that to any airport in New York, and would be longer still by commercial air, given the difficulties of loading and unloading a commercial aircraft.

Portland to Boston in two hours is dooable, at least once provided the New Hampshire and Massachusetts State Police aren't running radar traps on I-95.

I also know people who have said that they can go from Kittery, up the Maine Turnpike and then on I-95 in two and a half hours. I know that they have said this once, but I don't know if they are still driving.

sory hate to disagree with ya but from warren ave portland me to bay bridge prkwy bronx ny is 296 miles average 41/2 hrs.done it 5 or 600 times in the last 20 years.from dover to here is 30 min from here to portland is 11/2 hr.
so from dover its around 61/2 to 7 hrs to ny.but why drive all the way to ny when you can get most every thing ny has in manchester or boston.

[Acadianlion]

Originally Posted by RANGER.101ST

sory hate to disagree with ya but from warren ave portland me to bay bridge prkwy bronx ny is 296 miles average 41/2 hrs.done it 5 or 600 times in the last 20 years.from dover to here is 30 min from here to portland is 11/2 hr.
so from dover its around 61/2 to 7 hrs to ny.but why drive all the way to ny when you can get most every thing ny has in manchester or boston.

Depending on which mapping program is used, the mileage from Dover Foxcroft to New York City...I used Madison Avenue...is 440 miles and according to the mapping program will take between 6 1/2 and 7 hours. The original question was from Dover-Foxcroft to New York City.

Depending on which mapping program is used, the mileage from Warren Avenue in Portland, Maine to Madison Avenue in New York City is 314 miles and will take just about five hours.

I agree that it is possible to drive these distances in less time. Depending on the time of day and the amount of traffic encountered, half an hour or perhaps a bit more can be shaved from the time that elapses. This will require that no stops are made, that there are few if any cars at the toll gates, and that one is willing to travel at least ten to twenty miles per hour over the posted limit. Now, I am well aware that most traffic in the more urban areas and even along the Maine Interstate highways travels at seventy miles per hour or better. Well and good, but it is also equally true that the State of Maine will strictly enforce speed limits using the meager resources of the Maine State Police along these routes, and one speeding trap will slow traffic for a considerable distance in each direction for a while.

The point here is that over a 300 mile distance from Maine to anywhere it is NOT possible to maintain an average speed of 80 miles per hour. The reason that it is not possible to do this is that in order to AVERAGE 80 miles per hour, a significant amount of time must be maintained at much faster than that. Especially when driving in areas that are increasingly more congested as one drives along.

Five to six hours from Portland to New York isn't magic. But it means no stops, and although I don't know this, I believe the Mapquest and other computer programs compute using only the states' published mileage and factors in using the legal speed limits along the way. So the time that the programs show are very conservative. However I do not believe that they factor in any time for stops along the way. As a practical matter this means that a stop for gasoline will add fifteen to twenty minutes to the total elapsed time of the trip. Most cars have a fuel tank that will hold 16-18 gallons. Most people do not want to run their tanks to zero, so if we assume 15 gallons available, AND the car will actually deliver 20 miles per gallon, that means that in a 300 mile one way trip, a stop will need to be made somewhere that there is gasoline available. Most cars do not actually deliver fuel mileage much better than that, unless they are very small. But even at thirty miles per gallon, a stop will be made between Portland and New York City.

So to anyone who wants to try to go from Portland to New York City in less than five or six hours in an automobile, I wish the best of luck. It will be a tough drive and although you may do it once, you will not do it often.

Now, I freely admit that I am probably not a socially responsible driver. In my past are many, many hours of competition driving, mostly time/speed/distance road rallys, where elapsed time is computed to the tenth of a second using odometers corrected for accuracy. In addition, I have in my recent past been a high mileage driver here in Maine for a living. I personally believe that there should be a high speed lane for vehicles that are maintained and drivers that are trained for high speed travel.

But I also know (from personal experience) that driving in excess of thirty miles per hour over the posted limit is an automatic misdemeanor speeding violation in Maine and is an automatic loss of license for at least 30 days. I have NO idea what the fine is now, but I can imagine that it is at least $500.

As I said before, I have heard lots of stories from people (mostly from away) who like to boast about the high speed runs that they have made from point to point arriving in Maine, all of the stories shrinking the very real distances and pointing out how sparce speed regulation in Maine really is. And it is: a State Trooper on any given day has much more to do than to catch people going five or ten miles per hour over the limit.

Now the real question that prompted this thread was from a young urban physician who is thinking about practicing medicine in Dover-Foxcroft. I will suggest that bragging about how fast one fantasizes that he had gone from point A in Maine to New York City is a disservice to someone looking for real information. The real truth is that it is four hundred miles or so from Dover-Foxcroft to New York and that means that it will take all day to cover the distance. The real truth is also that Maine officially will fine a speeder HARD and punish severely for an excessive speeding violation, so compressing time and distance in Maine can be just as expensive as it is anywhere else.

In October, 2011, I hope to run the first ever Downeast Ramble. The Downeast Ramble is a three day time/speed/distance road rally that will be open to anyone who wants to spend three days seeing some beautiful Maine foliage, and having a great time rolling over a thousand miles of Maine countryside. The rally will start in Augusta and end someplace else, with overnight stops at inexpensive places along the way. This is an "everyman's rally". Contestants will be given written instructions of the route course to follow, and each section of the route will require maintenance of an specific average speed. Winners in each class will be those who manage to maintain the average speed over the distance that is closest to the official average speed established by the rally masters. This average speed will probably be around twenty miles per hour, and I will tell you right now, that maintaining the average speed will be almost impossible. There will be a primary class of contestants, and those primary contestants will have to have a vehicle that is at least 35 years old...the official age cutoff hasn't been determined, yet. But there will be a special class for Maine residents also, and people will be welcomed driving whatever they have so long as the car (or truck) is legally registered and for road use and the operator is licensed and insured.

So for all of you "hot shoes" out there who like to boast about how you can manage this or that average over distance, perhaps you would like to try your hand at the Downeast Melee. The target date for this is Columbus Day weekend, 2011. Watch for the website, which I hope I can manage to get up by the first of next year.

[melinuxfool]

Originally Posted by Maineah

6 Hours??? Washington DC is only 12 from here. What are YOU driving?? Last time I looked 80 mph average X 4 hours is 320 miles. Some people don't drive 55 mph. I set the cruise at 80 and have NEVER been stopped!(except in Canada and that was the truck not the SAAB) It's almost the same distance from Portland to Presque Isle and I routinely do that in less than 4 hours in a pickup truck!! I've made Jacksonville Florida from here in 22 hours!! I'm not going to argue with you as we have made the trip many times and naturally you know more than I do. DW flies to NYC bi-weekly and assures me it's less than 1.5 hours total with check out at the other end. No more than an hour in the air on a bad day. Hell Boston is less than 40 minutes in a real plane. She leaves here at 6:00 am and is in downtown Manhattan before 9:00 WITH the check out AND taxi ride. They have these things called jets now that go about 500 mph.

You're fortunate if you can average 80 miles an hour. I can do 80 on a long trip, but even if I only stop for gasoline (usually when there's a quarter left, since you never know where the next one is), I struggle to average 70. I did anywhere between 80 and 90 on a recent trip to Toronto. It took me 11½ hours. Average speed according to the GPS was 67 miles an hour.

Of course, anyone who has driven the New York state through way knows how annoying the average upstate New York driver is... they're slow as molasses, hang out in the passing lane for no reason, and seem to do all in their power to slow you down.

Heck, I lost count of how many drivers would be hanging around in the right lane, see me coming, and switch over to get in front of me... there was nobody there for them to pass! http://www.thesmilies.com/smilies/angry/censored.gif%20border=0 (broken link)
I drive a 4 cylinder pickup truck, so it's a tad bit underpowered. When I drive, it's all about conserving momentum, not possible in upstate New York.

[RHB]

Back to the op....
Where in CT were/are you? If you were at Yale or Hartford you might like Lewiston better...closer to the cities. If you were at Backus or L&M then the other two would be okay (still a smaller than Norwich or New London)

[AdaminMaine]

I grew up in NYC and Bergen County NJ. I moved to Limestone, Maine almost 15 years ago and left a week after the ice storm of January 1998. My wife and I returned in the Summer of 1999. Aroostook County has some of the best snowmobile trails in the country (Michigan is number one).